When the radiations on the surface of Altair became fatal and it appeared the biosphere could not support life any longer, the civilization chose to hide underground. However, this happened over a millenium ago and the last living altairian is Harlan, whose body is a synthetic copy of the one he once had.

As all the Altairians when they got underground, he indeed received the "present": his mind has been transfered into an android looking like him. Hubald created this technology like all the technology in the subterranean base, but he also was on of the first to die, almost eleven thousands years before SG-1 came to Altair.

The altairian technology looks more advanced that our own, but not so much as the Tollan's or the Asgard's for instance. We can notice that:

• the altairian pressure unit is the Hubald unit, named after the designer of all the technology in the base;
• the Altairians discovered the Stargate after they hid underground, but could not use it anymore, because of the too limited supplies of energy of their synthetic bodies.